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Final Fantasy VIII vs SoulCalibur vs Starcraft vs Xenogears 2009
Results Round One Saturday, April 25th, 2009 Ulti's Analysis Of all the Add/Remove junk pre-contest, only one such change truly bothered me, and it was this one. SoulCalibur had zero business getting into this contest over the original Smash Brothers, especially given what we know now. None. Is there any doubt Smash Brothers places in this match, and possibly even threatens to take first? It would have clearly gotten Ocarina'd in the second round, but it would have stunned all the Starcraft people. Speaking of which, calling Starcraft is something I'm vastly proud of this contest. While people were out calling for another insane run due to the format, I was out calling Starcraft the most likely game to flop in this contest. People seem to forget how perfect a storm 2004 was for Starcraft, and only L-Block's run has ever been more impressive in my eyes. It was the perfect amount of vote totals, the perfect bracket placement, the perfect hype, the perfect opponents, the perfect everything. This contest? No way. For starters, "fourways are better for rallying" is a myth. Rallying in general is a myth outside of close matches late, and deciding entire matches by thousands of votes is ludicrous. There's a measure of rallying in every match. L-Block aside, people generally just vote for who they want. There's also Starcraft's opponents in 2004: Halo, Kingdom Hearts and Wind Waker are pretty hated on the internet. Against a high-selling mainstream Final Fantasy like 8? No way. And on the note of FF8, it's usually stuck behind FF7 in past polls. We've never really seen it by itself until this contest, unless you look at Squall, who has gotten quite strong these days. There's also the little-known fact that Starcraft is a really, really old PC game on a site that doesn't generally care about PC games. If we get to use the "it hasn't gotten any younger" argument with anything else, why not Starcraft? So no, I wasn't at all surprised when Final Fantasy 8 came out and killed Starcraft in this match. The people that had Starcraft potentially rallying past Ocarina in the division and winning the entire contest were especially ridiculous. Calling FF8 a potential top 10 game (a term used much too loosely in this contest) was obviously premature given future rounds, but I will never call this match an accident. The extent of the blowout was a surprise, but the blowout itself was bound to happen. Final Fantasy 8 shined with 7 removed from the picture, even with Xenogears in the poll stealing some Square votes. Frankly, Starcraft got lucky to place at all. If Smash Brothers were in this poll instead of that slug SoulCalibur like it should have been, Starcraft would have easily been pushed to third place and we would have had a "SHOCKING" contest result right in the first round. From huge 16 seed run to losing in the first round the second expectations are placed upon it. But thanks to scoring second place here almost by default, Starcraft in round 2 was allowed one final stand before its ultimate exit. Match Trends Ngamer's Same Day Analysis Match Prediction Heading into this season there were four entries that I was most excited to see take the field in this 4way format: StarCraft, Diablo II, World of WarCraft, and Half-Life (well, both HL1 and 2, but I combine them in my mind since they should be very similar). Strong yet independent titles like that are always the most enjoyable to predict, especially when a bracket is as flooded with Nintendo and Square as this one- and that's not even getting into the crazy rally potential all of these guys have! So from one perspective you could say that these 4 might be poised to make deep runs through this tourney, but looking at it another way... have you SEEN how badly the PC has been thrashed so far this year? Maybe that's a silly thing to point out given that the only PC title so far with any kind of potential strength has been Doom, but the most important computer FPS of all time going down easily to a Donkey Kong entry (that was dealing with Zelda) doesn't exactly inspire confidence. That's why despite StarCraft being something like my third favorite game, I'm expecting it to be a disappointment this season, at least relative to that magical (if fishy) 2004 run. It just seems like the '05 site shift wouldn't have done this game any favors, nor would the increased vote totals, and with SCII still a long ways off I'm not seeing much here to help it. HOWEVER, the results so far this season have left me with even less confidence in FF8! FF has just not been impressing no matter how you slice it, and this bad loss by FFT is probably the worst outing yet. I originally only took SC for the win in my bracket because of Xenogears being in the mix, but at this point I think I'd have to side with SC even if if X had been replaced with a neutral title. So yeah, I've got to go with StarCraft to take home a fairly comfortable 3-6 percentage win here just as pretty much everyone else seems to be doing. The cool thing about this poll though is that people seem to have no idea what to think about the bottom two choices. Does Xeno's 20% on FF7 mean it could hold up equally well today, like SoM did? Does Soul Cal's near-win over KH mean anything at all five years later? Personally I have no idea what to think about those two games, so I've just got them finishing about the same and will hope for the best. Which puts us at: * Starcraft - 35.67% * Final Fantasy VIII - 32.40% * Xenogears - 15.98% *Soul Calibur - 15.95% Here's hoping to see something exciting! Next Day Review Alrighty, well, SC underperformed in this one, no doubt about it, and there's also little doubting that FF8 has some legitimately scary strength; possibly it isn't even all that far behind FFX, to my surprise. Let's check the direct stats.... FF8 > SC with 61%, SC > Soul Cal with 64%, FF8 > Xeno with 77.4%. Good heavens! I was all prepared to come in here and say "don't tear up your brackets yet; SC still pulled 30% against good competition, and with Ocarina and possibly FF9 rolling in next round this could still turn into a barn burner." But I didn't realize how far 8 had pulled away beyond those first 4 hours... okay, guess I've got to agree with the consensus in saying that 8's got 2nd place locked up next round no matter what shows up there with it. Luckily for my bracket, I advanced Half-Life and had SC going out R2 anyways due to the PC overlap- not exactly impressive to get a pick correct for all the wrong reasons, but in a bracket this wild I'll take the points any way I can get them! External Links * Match Updates * Guru Match Predictions * Oracle Match Results • Previous Match • Next Match Category:2009 Spring Contest Matches